Finding The Sweet Spot

Many of our customers are companies who sell online marketing services to small businesses. When they come to us for sales leads, they usually know exactly what they want – what profile of businesses they‘re looking for and from which sites they’d like us to get the leads. Nevertheless, we do have customers who come to us asking we point them in the right direction – they want to know what the top categories of SMBs advertising online are, or in other words where the sweet spot is.

While there are many lists and reports out there, such as this YPA’s Top 10 IYP Headings, we wanted to provide our customers with real-time information on leading revenue-generating categories of SMBs who advertise online.

We looked at all the categories of SMBs who advertised in the last 30 days on leading local, vertical and IYP sites in several major US cities. Our clients liked the outcome, so we thought we’d share some of our findings in the form of a list of 15 leading revenue-generating categories of SMBs:

• Plumbing
• Attorneys
• Auto Repair & Services
• Movers
• Roofing Contractors
• Home Improvement
• Florists
• Dentists
• Air Conditioning
• Insurance
• Auto Insurance
• Contractors
• Spas & Salons
• Limousine Services
• Heating Contractors

Other categories generate high revenues in online advertising, but we found that these SMBs are the ones who advertise a lot NOW. We also found that while they do all purchase many ad products, not everyone buys the same PPC package on the same site or invests in a high end IYP ad. For example, while attorneys and automotive businesses are more compatible for advertising on vertical sites such as Avvo, FindLaw or Martindale and AutobyTel, AutoTrader or Cars.com (respectively), contractors and movers are more compatible for measurable performance based ad products such as PPC or Pay Per Call.

In other words, different sites and ad products have different SMB sweet spots, even among the highest revenue-generating categories.

Hanan Lifshitz is CEO and Noa Gertin is Director of Marketing at Palore, a provider of local businesses’ advertising data and information on their online activity. They also blog at The Palore Blog. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.